Finishing Touches

Finishing Touches

We’re done with the tomb in general, but now we need to add some final touches to make this thing look presentable. First, in the Tomb Objects tab, we select a large, metal, shiny ball called the Tomb Room Marker. This device, when present in a room, shrouds it in complete darkness until the Sim enters. Even though it looks atrocious here, they are invisible during actual gameplay.

We place one in every single room, including the rooms that are just leftover from marking the actual rooms. It doesn’t matter where you place it exactly, just as long as it’s in the room somewhere. These are not required to make the tomb function, but we don’t want to give away all our secrets.

Next, lighting, since this place is annoyingly dark. You can use any lights, but it looks a little silly to have modern lights in an ancient tomb. I place hanging lights everywhere, specifically using the Light of Brahman because they make that nice flame effect. The only exception is the 9-switch puzzle room, which I leave dark.

Now, I do all the flooring and walls. I make the floors a brown kind of stone or use red carpet, and I coat the walls with dark wood. Like with Shannon’s secret study, I’m not so sure all this wood and fire make good mates, but luckily we always have this magic wallpaper that never catches on fire.

Then I add some décor in each room, random candles or jars or piles of stuff, just whatever to flesh things out a bit more. I end with some landscaping on the surface, a few trees and flowers just to add color…

Our final touch is to find every link we created and do one more thing. We go to each place we had a behavior, CSC, then select “Activated Behaviors… > [whatever the behavior is] > Turn On Cause/Effect FX.” What this does is make a sparkle from a trigger to the behavior so as the player is hitting switches and so on, he sees exactly what’s going on.

Finally, we do one last CSC to the Tomb Room Marker in the last room with our final treasure chest. We pick “Set Final Room Marker…,” and are then prompted to enter a name. We’ll call this “PyroFalkon’s Egyptian Nest.” Now when the player gets here, he’ll see a pop up that he has completed this tomb.

EXTREMELY IMPORTANT: As soon as you’re ready to test the tomb, on the neighborhood screen, click the button with an arrow pointing upward into the star. This is the “Share” button, which, among other things, places a copy of the tomb into your lot library. If you don’t do this, you’ll have to MANUALLY reset every trap, every link, and every treasure after you do the testing. Backing it up here will save tons of time. If you do accidentally have to manually reset it, the big problem is the keystone. You’ll need to activate the “moveObjects on” cheat, then drag the keystone away from the panel.

After switching back to the neighborhood screen and saving, I fired up Agent Jack and travel to Egypt to test the tomb. Because I still have Testing Cheats on, I can just manually fix his meters when they get low so I don’t have to worry about sleeping or anything. I send him on his way, and enter my tomb.

Jack handles the first couple rooms okay but struggles with the Octagon. The statue isn’t pushable! Luckily, again because testing cheats are on, we can do something about it. I hold Shift and click the ground, and I choose “Build On This Lot.” This enters Build Mode even though I normally wouldn’t be able to. I CSC the statue, and I select “Make Visibly Moveable (Currently False),” which toggles that option to “true.” I switch back to Live Mode, and send Jack on his way.

My next problem occurs with the Excitement Dive Wells… They work one way, but there is no escape from the mummy afterwards. Whoops. I again do a Shift + Click on the ground, pick “Build On This Lot,” and examine the problem… Ah, I just never set it as an uber warp well. Well, that’s easily fixed.

Other than forgetting a Cause/Effect FX for one door, the rest of the tomb works surprisingly well. The rewards may be a little high for the little effort it requires to solve, but I’m all right with that. Not bad for a first effort, and one that I basically just threw together. I send Jack home, then go back to Edit Town (after saving, of course).

I got back to Egypt, then bulldoze my tomb. Don’t worry, my hard work isn’t down the tubes: remember that I backed it up first. I put a copy of my tomb—which is now totally reset and clean—back in the same lot, then go in and make all my adjustments. I’m satisfied, so from the neighborhood screen, I give it a name and short description, then click Share. That’s it!